I have shopped at Lush for years and always admired them. This interview completely changed my opinion of Lush. For a start off, the lady conducting the work trial/interview clearly hadn't read my CV. She was asking me what my last job was, etc. It doesn't take 2 minutes to skim over someone's CV to get an idea of who they are. What a way to make me feel like I'm just a number. Was then made to do a floor trial shift for almost an hour. You are expected to approach customers, talk to them, and do product demos. Essentially expecting me to know how to do the job with no training. When you are interviewing for a Christmas temp job you should take into consideration that the majority of people applying for you are going to be young and looking for their first job, so are going to have no experience, and putting them under that much pressure is innappropriate. Everytime I have ever done a trial shift for a company it has been a bad experience, and Lush was no different. Trial shifts are outdated - again, you cannot expect people to know what they are doing with no training whatsoever.

I went into the store to apply for the job and they gave me an application form on which I had to put my availability and three reasons why I wanted to work for Lush. I was also required to attach an A4 poster to show off my personality and creativity. I was then emailed a few days later and invited to a group interview. I attended the interview with around 15 other people. We were given name tags and asked to state our name, our favourite Lush product and our favourite book - this was a task to show your confidence and let the interviewers get a first impression of you. It's important to speak clearly and confidently and have good eye contact with the interviewers. We were then asked to shout out things that we knew about Lush, and it's important that you contribute to make an impression. As a recent graduate I wasn't used to talking over people and frustratingly a lot of my ideas were said before I could speak, so my advice would be to try and say your ideas as quickly as possible and not to worry about appearing rude. We were then split into groups of about 7 and told we had 15 minutes to come up with a presentation of a product we were given (my group was given Skindrink to present). We were supposed to give a kind of sales pitch to the interviewers that would encourage them to buy the product. I was happy with this task as I know a lot about Lush products and was excited to give all my ideas to the group. The interviewers came around the room and listened in to the groups and made notes. Our group then presented the product the way we would in store and the presentation seemed to go well. Unfortunately I received an email from the interviewers saying that they couldn't give me the job but were extremely friendly and told me I could email them and ask to receive feedback which I did. Their feedback was basically that I was too quiet during the presentation and was too accommodating to the rest of my team, allowing them to cut into what I was saying, although I found this confusing as I was fairly confident in the presentation and I thought the initial listing of facts about Lush had been my downfall. It seems that the company are simply looking for the loudest, most outgoing candidates and do not care too much about teamwork or product knowledge. It was a shame because I know that if I had been accepted I could have been a fantastic Lush sales assistant as I am passionate about the brand and offer fantastic customer service. I think maybe Lush needs to include a 1 on 1 interview section to the application process as well so that they do not miss out on some great candidates. However, the interview was great experience and the atmosphere was friendly and not intimidating so if you have little experience of group interviews you may find it worth it to apply even if you don't believe you will get the job.